Concordia discors

[The author thanks all of you for reading, reccing, and commenting. Between the metaphorical slash fangirls and the P/J subtext spotting, I think the LJ comments are now officially funnier than the stories.]

Disclaimer: Mina de Malfois is an original fictional creation. These stories and characters are the sole property of the author, but she lends them out for fanfic and fanart. This is a work of fiction. No resemblance is intended to any person or persons living, dead, or online. No BNFs were harmed in the making of this fic.


When I walked into the front parlour I found Liz glaring at the bare windows. ‘Curtains!’ she said, and I assured her that there were plenty of funds in the household management account, and she had my full permish to access it at any time and acquire the window coverings of her choice. I hadn’t known what to pick, myself, so I’d left it for her rather than risk committing a tragic drapery faux pas.

She looked mollified by the news that she had use of funds to run the Manor. ‘We also,’ she said more mildly, ‘should do something about the junior maid’s room. She has basic furniture, but we should provide bedding and toiletries and a few extras.’

I waved an airy hand. The servants’ wages kept them wardrobed and paid for their non-working game activities, but I had no problem covering additional costs so they could live comfortably. ‘Help her ornament her room to her taste,’ I told Liz, and then added curiously, ‘What is her taste, anyway?’ It had occurred to me that although I had a passing knowledge of her disastrous real-life romance, I knew very little about Stasia’s developing in-game persona.

‘Wicca-light,’ Liz informed me now. ‘I think what her heart longs for are a few unicorn- and fairy-themed items, a stack of Guides for the Teen Witch, and some glitter and beads.’

I winced slightly, but agreed that Liz should take the girl shopping. After all, I was paying Stasia to keep the Manor tidy and, until we had a butler, answer the door if required; I hadn’t bought the right to criticize her taste. What she wanted to do behind closed doors in the servants’ quarters was her own lookout, though it was unsettling to be told that we were harbouring a probable Platinum RavingWench reader.

Liz, whose key-toting avatar had settled in beautifully as the head housekeeper, produced a clipboard. ‘You have several emails waiting for you,’ she informed me now. ‘I couldn’t read them, of course, but most of the notifications that arrived on your desk had subject lines about Josh Amos.’ She lowered her voice, even though we were the only ones in the room. ‘There’s a rumour going around that Josh actually is one of the Voices,’ she whispered, ‘and that he’s concealing his true identity so that he can participate in the game without intimidating anyone.’

I frowned slightly. Liz spends her days off at the in-game fairs and markets, and at the theatres, so she picks up any gossip making the rounds. If she said that this was the emerging theory, I could trust implicitly that it was the latest, hottest tip. But it seemed to me that if Josh really was an in-game intrusion by one of the Powers That Be, he had most likely been sent here to spy on us.

Worried, I headed into my tastefully understated study and pulled a leather chair up to my oak-and-walnut desk--sorry to bother you with the details, but there’s no point in being tastefully understated if no one ever notices. Most of my emails were, as Liz had warned, about Josh. Several passed on a story he’d ‘let slip’ in a Sanguinity tavern about several actors who had crashed at his place once. Claiming to be embarrassed, he’d said they’d had to sleep on his floor; some of my informants had bought his ‘embarrassed’ routine, but I bloody well didn’t. If Josh Amos was releasing information about his Voice connections, it was because he wanted to encourage that line of speculation.

My final email was from Arc, and I’d saved it for last because it was the only one to which I intended to reply. No matter how busy I am, Arc gets an immediate response, and not just because she merits one: I just can’t seem to hold off on replying to her. I feel happier just seeing mail from her in my inbox, somehow.

This message, however, failed to delight me. ‘Sorry if your Penn’d Passion page gave you a shock,’ she’d written, ‘but I couldn’t reach you on IM, and we can’t be seen to drag our feet on such a serious matter, so I made the change the minute I heard the accusations. We’ll set aside some time to go over your stories line by line, making absolutely sure there is nothing, no matter how miniscule, which requires further attribution. I take plagiarism very seriously, and,’ the message concluded ominously, ‘I expect you to do so as well.’

I felt slightly stomach-quivery at that last line. I could tell those ancient rumours had reached Arc’s ears and, I realized belatedly, this might well be the first time she’d heard them. Certainly I never bring up unpleasantness from ancient days of yore when I posted at another archive entirely. I mean, why would I? But to a responsible soul like Arc, I saw now, that healthy impulse to just move on and let the dead past bury its dead might not appeal. She could be horribly honest and above-board. I sensed she was going to be now. What, I wondered with a shiver, had she done to my Penn’d Passion page, exactly?

I braced myself, and went to see.

I hadn’t braced myself enough. She’d taken down all my fanfiction. In place of the links to my stories there was a brief note apologizing for the inconvenience and stating simply that the stories would be available again shortly.

I stared at this in silent misery for several long moments before I saw the bright side. At least she hadn’t humiliated me in public by spelling out what, exactly, was going on. She’d put up a minimal, but strictly truthful, statement, and not deigned to confirm, deny, or even acknowledge the hurtful rumours. That was something.

I pulled myself together and messaged her. There was no point in delaying; I couldn’t possibly enjoy anything else, not even Sanguinity, until this was straightened out. She responded immediately, flipping me a text file containing the body of all of my fics, and suggesting we work our way through it together, line by line, doing a literary post-mortem. I agreed, dully.

‘You do understand,’ she asked gently, ‘why we have to do this?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I think too highly of you,’ she wrote, ‘to let you, even for a moment, inadvertently help the rumour-mongerers make their case. If there are any problems remaining with your fanfiction, we’ll fix them now, and then you can put this behind you.’

The chilly, scared clenchedness started to leave my stomach. I felt less as if I’d swallowed a bucket of live frogs and ice. ‘I think I’ve got most of the quotes properly referenced now,’ I said helpfully, ‘but you’re right. We should make sure.’ Under Arc’s watchful and competent eye I had no doubt I could get any remaining difficulties sorted out.

And we did, though it took hours, with Arc quizzing me closely, even suspiciously, and bringing up books and programs I hadn’t thought about in years. She was a veritable citation machine. I marvelled at her stamina.

‘That took forever,’ I grumbled when we were finally done.

‘Someday years from now, when you’re writing the original work I know you’re capable of, you’ll thank me,’ she wrote, and signed off abruptly, before I could respond.

I felt myself blush warmly from head to toe, and the last of the nervous, attacked-and-surrounded feelings just dissolved in the face of this unexpected praise. I mean. Quite. Wow. I felt too happy to sit still, and paced around giddily for a while before heading in to shower and get ready for bed. I had a full shift at work tomorrow, and then had to get back to Sanguinity to find out what devious schemes the fascist, controlling Voices were plotting, but right now none of that seemed to matter. Minor problems, really. I could deal with them easily. I could deal with anything. Let the Mean Girls say what they wanted: thanks to Arc, I’d risen above the reproach of even those with the longest memories.

I snuggled under the covers, toasty warm and strangely energized.




1. a tragic drapery faux pas: RIP, Sirius.

2. Platinum RavingWench. That would be Silver Ravenwolf, of course.

3. profic authors: such as Lee Goldberg, thorough professional.

4. Josh Amos gets his name from Josh Groban and Tori Amos. Speaking of Josh: look, an article on Grobanites.

5. He didn’t call them fans--he called them ‘Nomadic Listeners,’ shamelessly ripping off Tori Amos, who once called her fans “ears with feet.”

6. It was as if he’d nailed the Ninety-Five Symptoms to fandom’s front door, and then gone off to eat worms, as is traditional.
Yes, that’s a Diet of Worms joke.

7. an impassioned rant by Warr1or : inspired by the anti-MWPPslash rant, though I think we can safely say Warr1or's motivations are different from that other gentleman's. In a strange but lovely coincidence, mskatonic, who first reported that to Fandom Wank, is reading these stories.

8. during the course of which one of them insisted hysterically that another guest had threatened her with a metaphor. The specific metaphor was your ass is grass.

9. she’s a total Henry Jenkins fangirl, and approves of Textual Poachers.

10. Warr1or is basing his look on Lady Chatterley's Lover, of course.

11. Much love to ankaret for noticing that PrinceC sat down patiently on the monument. "Patience on a monument, smiling at grief" is a quote from Jeeves Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (2:4).